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One of the surest and swiftest ways to reveal something that you really didn't want to is to say it in front of a parrot or other talking bird. Especially a parrot that you've been trying and failing to teach some clever phrase. Birds have an innate sense of timing and can, when properly motivated, memorize a long and complicated phrase after only hearing it once. Yep, they're as sick as a parrot.

And don't let the fact that you've never spoken aloud about the issue in question reassure you. Any innocuous phrase that you might have said since the start of the episode can and will be used against you by the bird's selective memory quoting it out of context. A clever lawyer may use that to Make the Parrot Testify.

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Examples:

One of Geico's "It's what you do" commercials has a pirate captain's Pirate Parrot repeat his plans to hide the gold from his crew, as well as call them stupid and smelly.

An ad for Irn-Bru had a parrot acting as a Moment Killer to a couple trying to get affectionate.

A card commercial has a disorganized pet store owner who sold parrots that kept saying "Did you pay me?" Turns out they picked it up from her when she was contacting her patrons by phone asking if they paid the invoices.

In Rumiko Takahashi's short story In Lieu Of Thanks, a newcomer to a condo complex finds that the manager gets nervous when another tenant's pet myna cries out "crab shabu!" It turns out that the manager had eaten a crab that the tenant was planning to eat (as it was still alive and escaped, landing on the manager's porch), and the myna picked up the phrase from the tenant lamenting the crab's disappearance. Though the tenant didn't know what happened, the manager felt the bird was accusing her.

One issue has Archie planning to give Veronica a mynah bird he's trained to say his phone number whenever she picks up the receiver. However, he shows and tells this plan to Jughead, who spends the entire time getting increasingly upset and loudly voicing his hate for girls. Naturally, by the time Archie gets the bird to Veronica, all it says is what Jughead had been saying.

Another issue has Betty give Archie a parrot trained to repeat "BETTY COOPER!" over and over again to effectively "brainwash" him into being infatuated by her because of constantly hearing her name. That's not creepy or anything. It actually does work until Archie has to go away for a bit and has Jughead watch the parrot, who ends up discovering it loves pizza. By the time Archie gets it back it's since learned to yell "YUMMY PIZZA!" over and over instead and Archie's interest in Betty swiftly dwindles in favor of some Pizza Hut.

One Batman foe, Cap'n Fear, had a robot parrot that was designed to randomly record and repeat phrases said around it. Capturing the parrot and accessing its memory provided Robin with information to allow him to track down the pirate's hideout.

In one of Ralf König's comics, there's a parrot whose previous owner had spent all his free time watching porn films. Consequently, it was very hard to find an owner who could tolerate the parrot's utterances...

In one Superman story (from Superman Family #197), Clark Kent is given a mynah bird as a gift. When the mynah starts spouting "Clark Kent is Superman", Clark thinks he must have been talking in his sleep and the bird has picked up the phrase. He goes to elaborate lengths to scare the bird out of repeating this phrase only to learn that May Marigold (the person who had given him the bird) had taught it to say "Clark Kent is Superman" as a joke. The story ends with him attempting to cajole the bird into saying it again.

In one Golden AgeBatman story, the Penguin sells a millionaire a parrot that has been trained to remember the combination to a safe and repeat it to the Penguin.

Tintin and the Broken Ear had a parrot as the sole witness to his owner's murder.

In Tintin: The Castafiore Emerald, Captain Haddock gets a pet parrot, courtesy of Bianca Castafiore, who tells the Captain to watch the language, as Polly might pick it up. Later on, he does.

BILLIONS OF BLISTERING BLUE BARNACLES! SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING!

One Uncle Scrooge comic book involves a parrot repeating the combination of Scrooge's safe to a couple of burglars. This same story also contains an inversion of the trope: Scrooge had been using the parrot to help him remember the combination, which leads to difficulties when the bird flies away...

Another Disney Ducks Comic Universe story ("Il tesoro di Sierra Leone") has Scrooge and John D. Rockerduck looking for a prospector's hidden treasure by mining his parrot for info and following her through the wilderness. Hilarity Ensues as the parrot keeps refusing to spill the beans and demanding increasingly expensive delicacies... in the middle of the desert, no less.

A variation from W.I.T.C.H.: Will has telepathic powers that enables animals to sense her thoughts and emotions. This causes her some embarrassment when she volunteers to help her Love Interest Matt in his job at a pet store, and a parrot starts blurting out what she's thinking. While Matt is talking about another girl, Will has to keep the parrot's beak closed to keep it from revealing her angry and jealous thoughts, even musing at one point that she needs to be more careful what she thinks around it.

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Film

The segment N is for Nuptials from The ABCs of Death involves a man using a talking parrot to propose to his girlfriend. Everything is going well until the parrot starts recounting the time the guy slept with another woman. The parrot even starts acting out the woman's moans out loud.

In The Flintstones movie, this is an important plot point, where there is a talking bird who is used like a tape recorder (called a "dictabird") and things said in front of him are used as evidence against the Corrupt Corporate Executive villain.

Appears near the beginning of Wild Target. Bill Nighy's assassin character says his name to a victim. After the shooting, the victim's parrot starts repeating the name...

Jokes

There's an old joke about a woman purchasing a parrot which formerly lived in a whorehouse. The parrot, of course, thought his new home was another whorehouse and that the woman and her daughters were the whores, to their annoyance. Then the woman's husband came home and the parrot greeted him with, "New whorehouse, new whores, but still the same old customers. Hello, Larry!"

Or the one about the old woman who was a member of La Résistance against German occupation during WWII. Several resistance meetings were hold in her cottage. Naturally her parrot learnt some unsuitable phrases. After a while, the Germans started suspecting the old woman, and a squad was sent to investigate. They didn't find anything definite enough to arrest her, but while they were there, the parrot kept saying "Death to the Germans!" The squad leader promised to be back in a week, and if the parrot was still saying "Death to the Germans!", he would personally wring its neck. Now, the old woman was very fond of her parrot, and didn't want it killed. But how could she make it unlearn that phrase in just one week? At a loss for what to do, she consulted the priest of the nearest village, because he too had a similar parrot. The priest offered to switch parrots for a week. The old woman gratefully accepted. So, the week passed, and the squad of German soldiers returned to her cottage. The priest's parrot sat quietly in a corner. The squad leader, being in a bad mood and really wanting to hurt the woman somehow, went over to the parrot, bent down and whispered to it: "Death to the Germans!" The parrot solemnly replied: "May God hear your prayer, my son."

There is a nearly identical joke in Croatia: During Communist Yugoslavia, UDBA (Yugoslav equivalent of KGB or Gestapo, n.a.) heard that a priest had a parrot which was speaking against the country and the people. So they visited said priest and asked about his parrot. Parrot immediately said: "Rain falls, country falls apart.", and UDBA agents told him that he has two weeks to retrain the parrot. Once said time passed, they were back, and asked if he had retrained the parrot. He answered "yes", and was asked to demonstrate. So he told to parrot: "Rain falls, country falls apart.", and the parrot answered: "Thank God."

A woman bought a female parrot from a pet store but it had an issue. It would always say "I'm a slut, wanna screw?" She spoke to her priest about it and he said "You're in luck, I happen to have a very holy parrot, and he bows his head in prayer every day. Maybe he can help your parrot." So the priest brought his parrot over, and put it in the cage with the woman's parrot. The female parrot immediately said "I'm a slut, wanna screw?" and the priests parrot bowed its head and said "I thank thee, Lord, for answering my prayers..."

A man was walking through a pet store when a parrot called for his attention. "Buy me, I'm a very interesting parrot!" The man stopped and asked "What's so interesting about you?" "I have no legs," said the parrot. "Well how do you stay on the perch?" the man asked. The parrot replied, "I have a very long penis and wrap it around the perch!". The man did think this was an interesting parrot and bought it. One day the man came home from work and the parrot said "Your friend Harry was over today!" The man said "Really?" "He was hugging your wife!" The man asked for more information. "They were kissing!" The man asked for more info. "They took their clothes off!" Infuriated, the man demanded what happened next. The parrot responded, "I dunno, I got a woody and fell off the perch!"

There is an old Soviet joke about a man who comes to the KGB and says, "My parrot flew away, have you seen it"? The KGB officer replies, "We don't deal in such things, we aren't a lost and found parrots office". Then the man says, "OK, but if it ever comes here, just remember that I don't shareits ideas".

According to an Israeli joke, Assad Sr. once bought a parrot who was specifically trained to tell Assad, Moshe Dayan fucked you! Hahahaha! over and over. Assad brought the parrot home, and the parrot did as it was instructed, despite Assad telling it to shut up. Finally he got mad and cut out the parrots tongue. The parrot covered one eye with one wing and flipped him the bird with the other.

There is a joke about a woman telling her daughter's fiance how pure her daughter is, and goes to show him how modest is the room she never leaves. As soon as the parrot there sees the guy, he breaks into a monologue indicating... the girl might be a Technical Virgin, but no more than that.

Literature

The pseudo-encyclopedia The Dictionary of the Khazars at one point makes reference to the mechanism by which the Khazar language was preserved, despite the civilization's having been extinct for centuries - their language was repeated and passed down through generations of parrots on the shores of the Black Sea.

In Anne of Avonlea, Anne befriends an old man even though his parrot repeats his less-than-neighborly comments about her every time she comes around. He tries to rectify it by saying nicer things when he sees her coming, but apparently the parrot likes getting him in trouble.

The parrot in Next does this (given it's established level of intelligence, probably specifically for the lulz) at least once.

Invoked with the help of Voluntary Shapeshifting at the beginning of Animorphs #15, when Cassie talks the others into helping her shut down a fast food restaurant that uses live parrots as a gimmick.

parrot!Cassie: Awk! We should be flying free in our native habitats! Awk!

Older Than Print: An Arabian Nights story features a husband who suspects his wife is unfaithful and, before he leaves on business, buys a parrot in hopes it will inform him of what's going on.

Inverted in The Three Investigators novel The Secret of the Stuttering Parrot. Parrots taught clues to the location of a hidden treasure have been so badly traumatized by their treatment at the hands of criminals that they refuse to talk. Fortunately, a mynah bird in the group (a last-minute replacement for a dead parrot) has memorized all the clues, and can be easily coaxed to repeat them.

Played with in Martha Walks the Dog. Martha has fun teaching a parrot sentences, but its owner is not so delighted when he brings home a girlfriend and it starts saying she has fleas.

An eerie variation occurs in Robert Smythe Hichen's classic horror story "How Love Came to Professor Guildea". Among other hints of a growing supernatural presence, the professor's parrot begins to twitch and move in increasingly unnatural ways, and babbling in a low, grotesque voice. It turns out that the parrot is mimicking something the human characters can't perceive...

Mr. Big from the Garrett, P.I. series, aka "The Goddamn Parrot", was specifically trained to invoke this trope by Morley before he gave the bird to Garrett as a prank. Turns out it was pre-loaded with rude phrases and a tendency to cry rape.

In the novel All Clear by Connie Willis, Alf and Binnie's parrot repeats the less-than-polite conversation about hiding said parrot from the landlady verbatim within earshot of said landlady, causing Polly, Eileen, Alf, Binnie and the parrot to be evicted from the boardinghouse. This may have been due to the in-story nature of the space-time continuum.

In the Petsitters Club book The Rude Parrot, it is revealed that the parrot the Petsitters are babysitting was saying rude words because it was mimicking the speech of its previous owner, who had died.

In The Twelve Chairs, Ostap Bender starts a fake anti-Soviet resistance cell as scam to raise some money from local bourgeoisie. A parrot is present on the meeting of said cell. This parrot didn't talk before, but afterwards it starts to squawk quotes from Ostap's dangerously seditious speech.

Though not technically parrots, the Jabberjays in "The Hunger Games" fit this trope, being mutant birds specially bred to mimic what they hear and report back to the Capitol.

In Boy's Life two parrots overhear the murder and their subsequent bizarre behaviour provides a clue for the protagonist to unravel the mystery.

In a short story called "The Truth About Annie", a woman tries to figure out why her parrot keeps repeating phrases like "Annie died" and "Annie is bleeding". It turns out Annie was a character in a soap opera that the bird's former owner had been watching.

In The Newest Plutarch, John-Lincoln Baird's pigerots (pigeon-parrot hybrids) are used to deliver spoken messages. However, there was a problem with them repeating old messages until a pill was made to erase old recording from their minds.

Nina Tanleven: Inverted in The Ghost Let Go - as a ghost, Mrs. Smiley taught her parrot a phrase that she wanted to get out, but nobody understood it for the longest time. The phrase is "Go to Jeremiah", which ultimately leads Nine to the Book of Jeremiah in Mrs. Smiley's old bible, where she'd left the letter to her daughter that she'd written as she was dying.

The Thinking Machine: In "The Lost Million", a bitter old hermit tells his heirs before he dies that he has hidden his fortune where they will never find it. The only clue is the old man's parrot, which constantly swears and spouts random calculations. Van Dusen takes the parrot and, by writing down everything the parrot says, works out the numbers are actually a set a measurements. The old man had repeated them over and over when planning the hiding place, and the parrot memorised them, and was repeating them randomly. Once Van Dusen places them in the correct order, he just has to deduce the starting place.

Red Planet: Willis the Bouncer is confiscated by the new headmaster, who is unaware that the Martian 'pet' has sentience and can repeat any sound with perfect clarity. Willis overhears a discussion between the headmaster and the colonial administrator, who in a money-saving measure is planning to stop the colonists from migrating away from the harsh Martian winters. Willis repeats this conversation to the protagonists, setting off the plot as they set off to warn the colonists of the Evil Plan.

in The Real Maccaw by Donna Andrews (Part of the "Meg Langslow Mysteries) the titular parrot fingers a previously-unsuspected character - not by repeating any incriminating dialogue, but by repeating his owner's name in tones of passion, and in one of his lover's distinctive New England accent note the series takes place in Virginia. Interestingly, the murderer and her victim actually joked about this trope pre-murder, so she bought a similar bird and swapped them. Unfortunately the maccaw was a rare breed that couldn't be found at the pet store, so credit card records of the substitute bird's purchase became part of the evidence against her.

Live Action TV

Niles Crane had a talkative cockatiel for several episodes of Frasier. Its crowning moment of glory was to utterly sabotage an important party by repeating the insults Niles had spoken in the kitchen about his guests being drunks and lechers in hearing range of the not amused drunks and lechers.

NYPD Blue had the Pointy-Haired Boss bring in an obnoxious parrot that repeated everybody. Sipowicz forces the boss to get rid of it by a simple trick: he plants a tape recording of somebody shouting "Douchebag! Douchebag!" in the parrot's room overnight.

Small Wonder: In an early episode, the Lawsons have the Brindles as uninvited house guests after the latter family's house burns down. Naturally, the Brindles' parrot reveals the real cause of the fire.

On The Nanny, a parrot exposes that Fran told Val about Cher secretly staying at the Sheffields'. Although that is not why it spread to the media. Maxwell himself was responsible for that. Niles and Brighton also try to teach it embarrassing and untrue statements about Ms. Babcock and Maggie, respectively, but it won't cooperate with them.

In Season One of Twin Peaks, a search of the cabin where Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulaski were tortured reveals the only potential witness: Waldo the Mynah Bird. Hoping the bird will talk if left alone, Agent Cooper sets his tape recorder by Waldo's cage. Main suspect Leo, afraid of what the bird might say, shoots it — but not before the bird says his name on tape.

A variation is found on Friends. Monica is babysitting her nephew Ben. She accidentally bangs his forehead against a ceiling beam while tossing him up and down. Rachel agrees that they shouldn't tell Ross, but then Ben says, "Monica BANG!" Monica is mortified. "He's gonna rat me out!"

The Fast Show had one of these, who seemed to have been trained to have a vocabulary amounting to "Wanker" and "Twat". "Oh, bugger..."

In a cartoon skit on The Electric Company (1971), a plumber knocks on an apartment door. The parrot inside says, "Who is it?" followed by the plumber explaining, "I've come to fix the sink." This repeats several times before the plumber gets fed up and faints. Later, the parrot's owner comes home and asks, "Who is it?" The parrot says, "It's the plumber. He's come to fix the sink."

In Robin Williams' HBO Comedy Special Weapons of Self-Destruction, Robin talks about the dangers of keeping a parrot in the bedroom while having sex:

Also happens in an episode of Family Matters when Carl's boss, Commissioner Geiss, leaves his parrot, Andre, with Carl for a couple of weeks. During that time, after being irritated by the bird, Carl says his boss is an idiot right in front of it. Fortunately, Carl doesn't get in trouble when he learns that Geiss's wife already taught the bird to say that. However, the Commissioner lands himself in a pickle of his own when he calls his wife a pain in the butt as he and the parrot are leaving.

Subverted in one episode of Desperate Housewives, where Orson Hodge's backstory is revealed. His wife mysteriously disappears, and when his neighbor pops by to ask about her, the wife's parrot says, "Orson, No! Please! No!" It is later revealed that his wife is in fact alive, and the parrot just recites Orson's wife's pleas to not leaving her and getting a divorce.

In Comrade Harold, an episode of The Red Green Show, Ed Frid borrows his girlfriends parrot for the animal segment. Unfortunately, the bird calls Ed a loser who cant commit. To make matters worse, the parrot refers to Ed by name.

Hannah Montana: Jackson once dated a girl named Becky but it ended when his best friend asked him to watch over a parrot. Said parrot repeated unkind things said about another Becky.

On My Name Is Earl, Darnell revealed that back in the day before he got put into Witness Protection, he shared an apartment with a man who was a porn star. That porn star is now married to the governor of whatever state Camden is located in, and she got him a job as the warden of the state prison. A porn movie was being filmed in the apartment just as Darnell returned. He was OK with that, but asked if he could put a cloth over Mr. Parrot's cage.

Darnell: I don't want to hear him talking about this all night.

A second-season episode of Perry Mason had a parrot as witness to its master's death; it kept repeating a line where the victim pleaded with his killer to put down the gun. However, it turned out to be a substitute identical parrot, specially trained by someone who intended to kill the owner and wanted to shift blame onto someone else who hated the owner. Ironically, the guy who trained the parrot found the owner dead before he could kill him; he left it marching around the corpse anyway.

Get Smart used this trope a couple of times. In one case, a parrot that was supposed to be used to monitor a pet shop that was a KAOS front instead gave away Max's identity by repeating part of his conversation with the Chief.

The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Petries' neighbors, the Helpers, have a parrot who constantly says "Don't be nervous" in imitation of the husband, Jerry, who's a dentist.

The Not Going Out episode "Rabbit" revolves around Lucy accidentally running over her client's pet rabbit and Lee getting the blame. When they go to a pet shop to buy a new one, he jokingly asks a parrot if it can say "RABBIT MURDERER! RABBIT MURDERER!" Later on, the client shows up unexpectedly and backs Lee into a corner while Lucy escapes. You can guess what the parrot's contribution to the situation was.

The fist episode of Sun Tap subverts this. Local pension poacher Donald Hammer looses his pet parrot Wally and wants to get him back so that he can kill him before he lets slip about the location of his secret fortune. Wally himself is never seen or heard; as Donald's private investigator anticipates his motives and tricks him.

In the Murdoch Mysteries episode "Convalescence", an African Grey Parrot is a key witness to the murder to his owner. Because Detective Murdoch got injured earlier in the episode when he fell off a ladder, Constable Crabtree is tasked to solve the murder and has to figure out who the murderer is by what the parrot is repeating from the conversation leading to the murder. Also Make the Parrot Testify maybe?

An episode of Car 54, Where Are You? takes this trope to the extreme. Captain Block leaves his beloved but speechless pet parrot in the care of Gunther Toody. After several failed attempts at teaching the bird to talk, Toody gets frustrated and carelessly blurts out "I hate Captain Block!" You can guess what happens next — but that's just the beginning. A panicked Toody tries to exchange the bird with a look-alike that can't talk...only for the parrot to teach it its phrase. Furthermore, Toddy takes the bird to the pet store in hopes that the store owner can get it to stop. The parrot speaks, and within secondsevery single bird in the store is chattering "I hate Captain Block!". The poor pet store owner ends up giving all his birds away and getting a new batch. These are likewise ruined when a disgruntled Captain Block, back from vacation, brings his parrot into the pet store. The parrot speaks, and suddenly all the new birds are squawking "I hate Gunther Toody!"

Faerie Tale Theatre's episode based on Rapunzel gave the titular heroine a pet parrot. Of course it's the bird who repeats what she and her prince say to each other when the witch is visiting, giving the game away.

Implied: The M*A*S*H episode "Life With Father" has Henry receiving a movie that he, Hawkeye and Trapper will screen later, titled "What The Parrot Saw."

On an episode of Saved by the Bell: The New Class, Eric is trying to get a macaw to talk. When Liz reveals what Maria really thinks of her boss, the macaw immediately starts repeating it. ("Maria thinks Mr. Carey's a big jerk.") Later, the macaw gets loose after an earthquake and Maria has to track it down.

Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn In "The Secret", Dawn is upset when the school knows about her crush on Mack, a secret she told only to her brothers. She accuses them but they all deny telling, getting mad at each other for breaking Dawn's trust. However, Dawn discovered a parrot had mimicked her brothers teasing her when she first told them and the parrot had been brought to the Get Sporty cafe, where their friends hung out.

On Happy Endings Alex bought a parrot from a guy on the Internet whose name she thought was "A Ryan 420". As it turned out it was "Aryan 4/20" with the 4/20 in honor of Adolf Hitler's birthday. Most of the words and phrases the bird had picked up were racist.

In one episode of Adam-12, there is a scene where Reed and Malloy pull over a motorist for running a boulevard stop. Said motorist gives the cops the whole you-just-like-busting-people-like-me routine. Then his girlfriend's mynah starts saying, "Down with the pigs!" Reed and Malloy give him a warning, and he is definitely not going to run any more boulevard stops today.

Miscellaneous

One birthday card had a family with a teenage daughter sitting down to dinner when the parrot exclaims, "Awrak! Quick, Jimmy! Put on your pants and leave! My parents will be home any minute!" The daughter just sits there with an Oh, Crap! look on her face.

Found in a fortune cookie:

So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

Music

Bob Dylan's version of the traditional Murder Ballad "Love Henry" (also known as "Henry Lee") ends with the woman realising that her parrot has heard everything and trying to convince it to fly down to where she can reach it. The parrot is Genre Savvy enough to refuse.

A girl who would murder her own true love would kill a little bird like me!

Used in a few of the Child Ballads: "Bonny Birdy" (#82) has a knight learn of his wife's infidelity from the talking bird she mistreated; some versions of "The Outlandish Knight" (#4) play with the trope by having the heroine bribing the family parrot to conceal her attempted elopement from her parents. (In both ballads, the birds are basically talking animals rather than realistic parrots.)

Newspaper Comics

Used somewhat realistically in a The Far Side cartoon, of all places: A group of mobsters are discussing the location of their new hideout in a pet shop full of parrots. "Alright, let's repeat the address a hundred times or so to make sure we all get it."

The Far Side loved this trope. One comic has a pet shop parrot repeating its owner's last words ("Rack! The anaconda is loose! Call Animal Control!"); another has it repeating its thuggish owner's proscription to "Shut up, boid!" between snatches of song (given that the song is one note repeated, it may have been mimicking the guy's machine gun!); a third shows a parrot standing over a quicksand patch declaring, "Let go, Morty, you're pulling me in!"

FoxTrot did a plot similar to this, but with a toddler instead of parrot. While Paige was babysitting, she watched a TV show she wasn't allowed to watch (a Brand X version of Jerry Springer) and the kid picked up a swear word from the show. Hilarity Ensued.

In one Blondie comic, Dagwood is at a pet store looking at a parrot. He tells the salesman he'll agree to buy it if the salesman can teach it to say "Come on in. Come on in." as a promotion for Blondie's catering business. The salesman tells him it'll take about a month, so Dagwood comes back a month later, and sure enough, the parrot is saying "Come on in. Come on in." Unfortunately, it also learned "And kiss my tattered tail feathers."

ThisPerry Bible Fellowship strip, though given the nature of PBF, it's ambiguous as to whether the parrot was really repeating the mooks' words or whether the parrot just wanted the boss to think it was.

In one episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, two parrots are discussing whether one of them has an unfaithful wife, pausing to repeat the last thing the other one said. At the end, just when the married parrot has decided to trust her, his friend repeats something she said when they were together...

Theater

In one of the Bottom Live stage shows, Richie is looking after the vicar's parrot, but discovers - shortly before a visit from the queen - that it has acquired a large vocabulary of bad language from Eddie.

In the adventure game Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, you have to play a keyboard for a parrot to learn and repeat later. This being Monty Python, you have to play the keyboard incorrectly for the parrot to learn it correctly.

In Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest, there's a parrot who will provide some pretty helpful information at the right times.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's Plant chapter features a parrot owned by Emma who will squawk various things, among them a hint on where the guards store their dirty magazines ("Top of locker! Top of locker!"), as well as some groaning catcalls which are implied to be the guards' reaction to them. In an example which is both completely optional and a superfluous display of realism, Raiden can also teach it a few phrases by repetition. Using the directional microphone to make Raiden say, "You must be Ames," will add that phrase to its banter, and it will also mimic the guards' alerts if you get caught in that room enough times.

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario is only able to defeat a certain boss after guessing his name, and he learns it after listening to the bad guy's pet parrot. This being a fantasy world, though, the parrot is much more capable of speech than usual, so the bad guy is slightly off the hook.

Double Subversion: In case 4 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix calls a witness' pet parrot to the stand, hoping that it'll blab an important piece of evidence, but finds the opposition has thought ahead and managed to re-train the parrot. It still gives enough information to let him go ahead with the trial.

In Infocom's Sorcerer, the player character's mentor's parrot provides some important clues by saying things like "Where did I leave my spectacles?", "Now where can I hide this key?" and "You should never have let down your mindshield, you doddering old Enchanter. Squawk!" Then it starts asking for crackers.

In Ultima VII: The Black Gate, striking a parrot (any parrot, anywhere in the game world) with a gavel causes it to reveal the map coordinates of a pirate treasure.

In Ultima VII Part II: Seprent Isle, hitting a parrot with a mallet will eventually make it say "That will not work this time!"

Web Original

In thisFutility Closet, a parrot helps the police by repeating the burglars' names.

This Pet Shaming photo shows a parrot who accidentally placed an order using Amazon Echo.

Webcomics

Subverted in ThisCyanide & Happiness strip, where a man's pet parrot squawks about gassing all Jews and killing all the blacks, convincing the other man he's talking to that the man is a racist. After the man scolds his parrot for humiliating him, it's then revealed that the parrot actually is a Nazi.

Western Animation

The page quote comes from an episode of the Animated Adaptation of Ace Ventura appropriately titled "The Parrot Who Knew Too Much", which featured a parrot who had overheard recurring villain Baron Declaw talking with his right-hand man about a scheme using altered maps to allow him to level the rainforest. The episode's plot dealt with Declaw chasing after the parrot to keep the information from getting out and Ace trying to save the parrot so it can testify about Declaw's scheme. At the end of the episode, when Ace is releasing the parrot back into the wild after its testimony saves the rainforest, he finds out it overheard details about secret documents while in Washington.

In the Alvin and the Chipmunks interpretation of Treasure Island, Jim Hawkings (Alvin) exploits this to get Long John Silver (Dave)'s parrot to reveal that Long John was planning on double crossing his fellow pirates.

In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "The Parrot Trap", Dexter creates a robot-parrot to keep around the lab, largely to hear it mimic his bragging and self-praise ("Dexter is the most brilliant mind in the entire universe!"). It backfires in short order when the parrot begins to mimic Deedee, then escapes the lab and threatens to blab about it to Dexter's parents.

Seen in an episode of Doug, where a parrot overheard Patti and Skeeter's confidential discussion (being locked in the same closet with them), and then mentions it in front of Roger, causing Patti and Skeeter to think the other betrayed their trust. Plus, the parrot was used to parody "The Raven".

In the same episode, Peter's new parrot, Adrien Beaky picks up some things.

Adrien Beaky: Pick a lane, bitch!

Peter: Isn't that funny? He heard me say that on the way over in the car.

Adrien Beaky: I gotta pee. Where's that Snapple bottle?

Peter:(laughs)

Adrien Beaky: I had a gay experience at camp.

Peter:(nervously laughs) We uh, had the radio on and they were saying some wacky stuff...

Invoked and subverted in Fillmore!, where O'Farrell thinks he can get a parrot to testify as a witness, but it just squawks and bites him. The rest of the Safety Patrol ignore him as he continues to try even after the case is solved.

O'Farrell: Polly want to confess what he saw between 10:26 and 10:31 this morning? Huh!? Do ya, Polly!?

In The Flintstones episode "Buffalo Convention", Fred gets Wilma a Dodo bird named Doozy who can talk. However, he refuses to speak in front of Wilma, causing her to doubt Fred's claims. Doozy eventually does start talking...right when Fred and Barney are talking about the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes' secret convention in Frantic City.

"Frantic City! Frantic City!"

Inverted on G.I. Joe, in that the secret overheard by Shipwreck's parrot actually turns out to be the key to defeating a COBRA plot. The bird has the courtesy not to blab the code words to unlock a formula hypnotically buried in Shipwreck's memory until it can save the day by doing so.

Girl Stuff Boy Stuff: "Teacher's Pet" had Ben tasked with taking care of the teacher's parrot for a few days. His friends teach it to say various things as jokes, including "Ben is a chick magnet", which they find funny since he's a Casanova Wannabe. The bird talks incessantly while Ben tries to sleep, and he tries to get it to stop talking and bribe it with a cookie. It also turns out to have a skin infection which it didn't seem to have until the bird was in his care, and since Ben doesn't want to be blamed for it, he tries to treat it in secret. When it comes time for the parrot to be given back to the teacher, it suddenly repeats a large number of the phrases it learned over the course of the episode, ending with...

The Kids From Room 402: In "The Peep and the Sheep", Jesse and Vinny teach a parrot to say rude things as part of a prank. Unfortunately, for them, the parrot heard them using their names while discussing ideas.

Happened to Mike from Mike, Lu & Og in the episode "Repeat After Me" with Wendel's bird Skipper, who took her lines out of context to offend her friends.

Lu: Now that everybody hates you, I'm the most popular girl on the island.

Skipper: Rawk! Spoiled brat! Spoiled brat!

Lu: And if he keeps this up, the only one.

In the Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Farting Dragon", the Scissorsmith's rather talkative parrot tells Jack where the dragon is that's causing the foul smell plaguing the town. Although the Scissorsmith had previously told Jack that's it's actually his wife. ("Never sell a wizard an expired fishing license," he warns. Of course, the guy was pretty eccentric.)

Stōked: Lo's plans for ditching work are blabbed by the restaurant's cockatoo.

In one episode of Total Drama Island the campers who have already been voted off have to select the remaining camper who will be joining them. After a few vote for Leshawna because they miss her, it's pointed out that they shouldn't vote for her because they want her to win. Unfortunately, every time someone says "Leshawna," it counts as a vote. A parrot appears out of nowhere and repeats her name, which is also counted as a vote. Pointing out that a parrot shouldn't have the right to vote also counts as a vote.

Though not a parrot, a rumor that the Furby could mimic what was said to them (a misunderstanding of how the pre-programmed Furbish-to-English transition in the toy's speech worked) had several intelligence agencies banning the toy from their offices to prevent the little cretins from repeating top-secret information to unauthorized members of society.

A crime was solved because of this trope. At a murder the only evidence found was a flute with a defective key that produced a unique sound. A sailor was found in possession of a parrot that would make a sound exactly like the flute. Later evidence proved that the sailor was guilty.

On the other hand, in American courts the parrot's "testimony" alone is not proof of guilt. There was one case (Wiki Magic, anyone?) where the suspected murderer was the boyfriend of the victim, but the parrot said the name of the victim's roommate followed by what seemed to be a plea to stop.

A similar if not the same case: the murder of Jane Gill. The defense attorney tried to introduce testimony that her parrot had started to repeat, "Richard, no, no, no!" when the defendant's name was Gary. It didn't work.

Because parrots have very long lifespans and often outlive their owners, it's frequently advised to parrot owners to avoid swearing around their parrots so that when the owner dies, the parrot will have an easier time finding a home. (Oddly enough, most prospective pet owners don't want their birds to swear at them.) Suffice it to say: no matter how hard you try, no matter how polite you are around your parrot, the one time you break your toe on the coffee table and slip up with a Cluster F-Bomb, the parrot will remember. Inevitably.

Andrew Jackson's parrot had to be forcibly removed from his funeral because it wouldn't stop swearing. In two languages! (It was fluent in English and Spanish)

Aside from speech, parrots have also been known to imitate ringing phones, doorbells, knocks on the door and so on, well enough to interrupt conversations because the listeners excuse themselves to answer the caller.

Including a parrot who had lived for several years in a care home for elderly people in Glasgow. After it was re-homed, its new owner took it to the vets saying it was sick, it seemed to be constantly coughing and grizzling with discomfort... (of course a genuinely sick parrot wouldn't cough like a human anyway...)

A fire station had to get rid of its pet parrot because it had learnt to perfectly imitate the alarm bell.

There was a story a while back about a couple who kept their African grey in their bedroom; they "got busy" one night, and while guests were over, the African grey repeated the events of the night back to them.

Parakeets and Quaker parrots are also notorious for this.

There's a Mexican stock phrase named Mataron hasta el Perico (They killed even the parrot), who was adopted after a notorious mass murder case that happened in the 1950s when the killer killed even the owner's parrot, since it knew the name of the murderer.

The menuridae (or lyrebirds) are a family of Australian birds which song is a perfect imitation of any noise the bird have heard (males seem to be more skilled than females). Not only other bird songs, but also cameras, chainsaws, car alarms, etc. And even sometimes the human voice.

During the French Revolution, the parrot owned by a French aristocrat family was caught endlessly repeating "Long live the King! Long live the priests! Long live the nobles!", at a specific time during which this kind of words were very frowned upon. Brought in court during the trial, the poor bird repeated those infortunate words, sending its owners to the guillotine for being against the Revolution. Sources seem to disagree whereas the parrot was executed too, or was spared to be reeducated by a family of "good patriots".

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